It has been my experience that many long term sales people know as much or more about their profession that some brokers. They haven't taken the step of obtaining the actual brokers license because of the additional expense and liability. You mention what appears to be a staggering number of licensees but my dear old statistics professor warned me to be wary of numbers *particularly* when not set in comparison to other occupations such as doctors and police officers, etc. Have you done research into how many new licensees drop out of the profession within the first 2 years or how many have their licenses on inactive status? How about the percentage of licensees who are lenders, appraisers and other peripheral occupations that have have no direct interest in real estate sales? Further, I don't know about you, but I personally know a half dozen agents who, whether they had a brokers license or not after 3 years, would still be just as incompetent:-) A broker designation is no guarantee of quality, my friend and the thing that makes me shudder when I see an article like this is, there are bigger fish looking for any excuse to eat YOU...i.e. attorneys. For years now, attorneys have periodically lobbied in Cal. to take over the real estate industry. No matter how lofty your purpose in presenting an article like this, you run the risk of adding logs to that fire...